by Drew Perry
“Well,” Beth says.
“Yeah,” Jack says.
“It’s good he’s OK,” she says.
“It is.”
“It’s good the bone’s not broken. That’s what he said, right?”
“He said they’d have to see,” says Jack.
“But he said it wasn’t fractured.”
“Right.”
“So,” she says, and as she says it, as they’re standing there in the emergency room, he sees, clearly, that it was a mistake for him to come here at all, knows already what she’s getting ready to ask, knows, too, with what feels like relief, that he’s going to have to say no. That he’s going to be able to. He can’t be part of this. Not this way, not any longer. “Should we go back there and see him?” she says.
“No,” he says. “I don’t think so. At least not me.”
She looks at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I can’t go back there,” he says. “I don’t feel like it.” They’d be standing there together at the foot of Canavan’s bed, asking him if it hurt a lot. “I don’t want to do it,” he says.
“Why did you come here, then?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he tells her. His stock answer, and the truth most of the time. “Because I watched them put him on the ambulance. Because you just assumed I would. So I did.” He looks over at Hen, at the fish tank. There’s a treasure chest with bubbles coming up from it, a pirate who pops out of it from time to time. “And he’s OK,” he says. “The doctor said he’s OK, so I’m going.”
“You’re going.”
“Yes.”
“You came here just to sit in the waiting room.”
“I guess so.”
“He’s not OK. He has staples in his leg.”
“And you should go back there and see him,” Jack says. “You should go take care of him.”
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” he says.
“Should I tell him you were here?”
“Sure,” he says. “Tell him whatever you like.” He’s suddenly in a pretty big hurry to go. He wants away from all this, from Beth, from Canavan, from Beth and Canavan. He wants the truck, wants his front porch with the cardboard taped over the broken window, wants the quiet and the noise of his street. And he feels untied, telling her this, feels freed, feels like somebody’s opening up a door and letting him out. He does not have to go back there, does not have to watch Beth minister to the gravely injured Terry Canavan, and so he’s not going to.
“This is ridiculous,” she says. “Come back there with me and see him. He’s your friend. He almost cut his leg off.”
“I’m not sure he’s my friend,” he says.
“Come on, Jack, we can talk about all of this later, we can work—”
“Work it out?” Jack says. “How I live in our house and you live in his? Maybe the three of us can come to terms,” he says. “We can work out how much longer you’ll be there. We can all of us make some kind of deal.” He walks back over to the rows of chairs, gets the catalog, gets the fire helmet, gets The Duck. He gives Hendrick the rest of the orange crackers. He says, “I don’t think so, OK?”
“Jack.”
He looks up. “What?”
She zips her purse closed. She bites on the inside of her mouth. He’s got her on this one. He knows he does. “I’ll tell him you were here,” she says. “I’ll tell him that you came by.”
“OK,” Jack says. “Good. Thanks.” And then—what comes next is that he sees himself holding his hand out to shake hers. It’s like his body is rebelling against him. There’s his arm, his hand. Her face changes as she reaches out, takes his hand. Something unbends. This will be one of those brightly lit moments they’ll have no problem remembering. The time when. He is shaking hands with his wife in the emergency room. He’s not sure he’s ever shaken her hand before. Surely he has. Joking around about something. Pleased to meet you. She looks like she can’t figure out what to say to him now. She probably can’t. He lets go, puts The Duck on Hendrick, and walks him out the automatic glass doors into the parking lot and toward the truck. The first time he turns around, Beth’s standing right where he left her, looking confused, watching them go. The next time he looks, though, she’s gone.
Back home. He gets Hen in bed, late—tomorrow will probably be hell—and sits on his porch for a minute. The girls down the street are really at it, standing out in the yard and smoking and laughing and yelling at each other to shut up, shut the hell up, oh my God. He goes across the street, turns a light on in one of the back bedrooms, comes back and sits in his own house and watches the glow. It’s cool again tonight. He turns the attic fan on low, drags air in through the windows, listens to the enormous hum, feels the floor vibrate. He’s hung the fan just wrong enough to shake the whole house. Eventually, he’ll have to get back up in the ceiling with some foam or something, put that under the edges of the fan, see if that might cut down on the shaking. He gets a beer, clicks The Weather Channel on. Rain in Portland, 106 in Phoenix. Storms in the Midwest and in Kentucky. Nothing in North Carolina. Maybe showers later in the week. A woman in a pink suit shows the radar loop of a thunderstorm moving through Austin over and over. She’s new. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her before. She’s pointing to the storm, then spreading her palm wide like she’s wiping something off the rest of Texas.
Hendrick is asleep. The house hums and bounces. Bethany is either still at Moses Cone, waiting, or she’s driving Canavan back to his house. She’ll stop at the grocery, offer to buy him whatever he wants. Peach ice cream? Chips? Nothing? Are you sure? She’ll get him back home, get him set up in the bed or on the sofa, leg elevated, glass of water, fancy pain pills. He’ll fall asleep and she’ll walk the house, trying to figure out what to do now.
How pissed off he is comes and goes, which worries him, because he feels like here’s one more thing he’s getting wrong. He feels like anybody else would be over there trenching his yard every night, would be slashing their tires, would be standing in the driveway screaming at her, demanding things. Stella! Anybody else would have stood there in the hospital and asked her to end it, to come home, finally, would have said Isn’t this about enough? He’s not talking to a lawyer, he’s not asking for a divorce. He doesn’t go to strip clubs, doesn’t go home with the woman at the Brightwood with the tattoo of the world globe. He doesn’t tell Hendrick that his mother is a stonehearted bitch, doesn’t even tell Butner that. Because she isn’t. That’s half his problem right there.
He watches more radar, runs a checklist of what he’s got to do before he can get a sign in the yard across the street. Get the house sold, or ready to sell, and that’ll help. Prime and paint. Sand the floors. They hired the floors out over here, but he watched the guy do it, thinks it might be something he could do himself. The weather goes to commercial. Toyota, allergy medicine, a gun show coming to the Coliseum. The local forecast is supposed to come on next, but the feed’s all wrong, and instead he gets loops of the visible satellite for the Pacific Northwest, for central Canada. His doorbell rings, and he looks at the clock on the microwave: It’s ten-thirty. Yul Brynner goes apeshit, comes flying down the hall, barking, puts his nose right up against the door. It’s way too late for it to be anybody trying to convert him to anything. It could be the police. It could be Bethany, ready to apologize, ready to help him figure out just what it is that they’ve done to each other. He gets hold of Yul Brynner, opens the door, and it’s Rena. The dog stops barking, wags like crazy. She’s standing there holding two bottles of red wine. She’s been crying. She says, “Hi.”
He says, “Rena.” She’s wearing jeans with holes in the knees and a thin T-shirt that says ORE-IDA OVEN CRISP FRIES on it.
She holds up the wine. “This is the best I could find at your quickie mart down the street.”
“Did you dye your hair?” he says. It’s blue at the ends.
“Yeah,” she says. “I thought I sho
uld try it. You know—kid stuff. While I was out on my own.” She looks at him, looks behind him into the house. “What have you tried? Since you’ve had the place to yourself?”
“Nothing,” he says. Her hair looks good. Strange, but good.
“Too bad,” she says. “Guess what? Terry called me from the hospital. Seems my boyfriend has sustained an injury. I think I’ve got most of the story now.”
“I was supposed to call you. I’m sorry. I just didn’t know what to say.”
“What’s there to say? Let me in your house. Let’s drink all this wine.”
“OK,” Jack says, and he lets her in, follows her into his kitchen, watches her dig through his drawers, watches her work his shitty wine opener into first one cork and then the other. She opens both bottles. She’s got little ropes of muscle in her elbow. He gets them a couple of tumblers out of the cabinet, sets them down on the counter.
She fills each glass almost to the brim. “Cheers,” she says, picking hers up, holding it out.
“Cheers,” says Jack.
Rena looks at the tile floor, at the plywood wall. “Well,” she says. “I love what you’ve done with the place.” She takes a long drink from her glass, smiles. The attic fan is rattling the dishes in the cupboard. Rena says, “Tell me all about your day, dear.”
And he does.
TWO
Olives in the Street
Jack Lang. Always the kind of name Little League coaches latched onto without any problem whatsoever, rolled in the mouth and shouted across the diamond: LANG! Like that. WATCH IT IN, LANG! HERE WE GO! LOOK ALIVE OUT THERE! SHADE HIM TO THE RIGHT, LANG! YOUR OTHER RIGHT! YOU PAYING ATTENTION, LANG? BE A HITTER, NOW, LANG, BE A HITTER! YOU COULDN’T HAVE HIT THAT WITH A CANOE PADDLE! HOW YOU GONNA HIT IT WHEN YOU’RE SQUEEZING YOUR EYES SHUT? WHEN YOU’RE PULLING YOUR HEAD OUT? PRETEND THERE’S A STRING BETWEEN YOUR LEFT ELBOW AND YOUR RIGHT FOOT, LANG! HOLD THE BAT LIKE IT’S AN EGG, LANG, AN EGG YOU’RE TAKING HOME TO YOUR MOMMA! NOW YOU’RE READY, LANG! HERE WE GO, NOW! LET’S GO, LANG!
His last coach, though, was not a yeller. Forrest Adair. His Pony League coach, his last serious baseball, thirteen and fourteen years old. Coach Adair drove an ancient silver-blue Cadillac, blue crushed velvet interior, spoke hubcaps. He kept all the practice equipment in the trunk: Extra gloves, a bag of baseballs, old splitting sack bases, a metal fungo bat he used for practice. Miss Fungo. Here, Lang. Carry Miss Fungo for me. Stood there and smoked while he hit pop flies one-handed with that skinny, strange bat, muttered at his players around the side of his cigarette. Get under it, Lang. Two hands, now. Two hands. Fundamentals. You struck out, you let a ball between your legs: Fundamentals. Knee in the dirt, eye on the ball. They worshipped him. On uniform day he’d come bouncing over the speed bumps, springs and shocks creaking, park across two spaces, hand out jerseys from his trunk, smoke cigarettes one after another. Lang, which number you want? Five? Good. Five’s a good number.
Jack quit baseball in high school. By then almost everybody was bigger than he was, taller—not that height and weight mattered nearly so much as being able to hit a curveball. They could, he couldn’t. He was never what anybody would have called a natural athlete. He played hard—he hustled, coachspeak for having no idea what else to say: HUSTLE, LANG!—but he was not going to get recruited to play for some college somewhere, was not ever going to get drafted in the late rounds by the Royals. It was never going to be a matter of how much you want it, Lang. He could set challenges for himself all day long and give the full 110 percent and he was still going to be a little slow, a little clumsy, at least compared to the Lee Swearingens of the world. Lee was the kid on that Pony League team a step or two ahead of everybody else on the puberty curve, six feet and change at fourteen, already shaving every day, a mystery to all of them. He was the kid who could hit the ball over the trees past the right field fence and down the hill into the Mercedes dealership. The pissed-off salesmen would come up to the practice field, shiny gray suits and black shoes, holding baseballs, wanting to know about damages. Coach Adair would shrug his shoulders, smoke his cigarette, say to them, I don’t know, boys, I just don’t. Grinning. I can hardly tell the kid where to hit it, can I? Not the sort of man with a whole lot of time for Mercedes dealers. They’d leave, and he’d go back to pitching batting practice, serving up fat ones for Lee, hoping like hell for another blistering shot over the pines in right.
Jack did play softball, though, in college, at Georgia, for an intramural coed team, the Early Modern British Women. He was majoring in history—liked the line of it, the same wars in the same places, the same hordes sweeping across the same plains. He played shortstop for the Early Moderns, batted cleanup for the first time in his life. This was more his speed. His senior year, the team made an improbable glorious run to the coed quarterfinals, but was crushed by a team one of the sororities put together, the Delta Force, full of pretty thin blonde girls in tiny shorts, plus huge ringers from the baseball team’s practice squad. Those guys gave 110 percent. They strove all over the place. The game was called after four innings, the Delta Force leading 17–0. Mercy rule.
Jack the historian graduates and goes on to Carolina, to grad school, to get officially certified as smart, as the man who sees it all now, his undergrad in American and British, his Master’s/PhD track in something he’d tell people at parties was going to be a kind of history of land usage. He’d stand on someone’s run-down front porch in the middle of the night, half-drunk, and say, You know, a history of the United States through the lens of the way we use the land. The lens. He’d loved that word. Thought it made him sound like a thinker. He was drunk a lot in grad school. They all were. They’d go to long afternoon classes, and then out to the bars, yell at each other about whether John Crowe Ransom ought to be as significant a figure as he was. Or Sinclair Lewis, or Upton Sinclair. Jack had a big book in mind. Everybody had big books in mind; everybody was going to be on Charlie Rose or Meet the Press. His master’s thesis was on the Linn Cove Viaduct, the most complicated bridge ever built, which cantilevers itself around a mountain in western North Carolina. 1,200 feet long. 153 segments, 50 tons each. Only one segment is actually straight, he’d tell anybody who would listen. Only one. They built it in the air, hung one section off the last. Supreme technological achievement. He’d been out there several times to take pictures, had 8x10s up all over his apartment. He was expanding his work for his dissertation. Each Wednesday afternoon, when the History and Philosophy faculty and grad students would take on Chemistry and Physics—there was a softball game—his advisor, Dr. Dunst, would tell him that he was under no circumstance to use the phase one of the marvels of the modern world. Goddamn it all, Lang, Dunst would say, lacing up his cleats. The man wore cleats for faculty softball. We’ve seen enough marvels, don’t you think? Aren’t you tired of marveling? Jack played left field, made long diving catches when he didn’t really have to. He hit OK.
He meets Beth this way: At a party, cheap can beer on ice in a plastic tub, somebody out on the sidewalk grilling chicken legs and corn on a big red kettle grill propped up on cinder blocks. He half-knew who she was already, had seen her at TA orientations. Sharp chin, green eyes. Art History. She was one of a gang of grad students who all lived on the same street, rented from the same landlord, haphazard apartments cut three and four and five at a time into a handful of slouching Victorians. They had cookouts a few times a year for all comers. She walked up to him at the party, said, “I’m Beth. I know you from somewhere. Do you need a dog?”
“I can’t,” he told her. “I’ve already got one.” The first week he was in Chapel Hill: Registered for classes, got a dog from the pound.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Jack.”
“Right. I thought I knew you. Are you sure you don’t want another one? Another dog?” Her lip was sweating. Her hair was tied up in something. She had barbecue sauce on her shirt. He liked all of that. “Tanya’s dog had puppies.”
�
�Who’s Tanya?”
“She lives down the street. French Lit. Not my thing, but she’s pretty into it.”
“I can’t get another one, I don’t think. Yul Brynner would be pissed.”
“Isn’t he dead?”
“Is he? Kojak?”
“That’s Telly Savalas,” she said. “Isn’t it?” Telly Savalas. It came down on him. An historical blunder: He’d named the damn dog after the wrong bald guy. Too late now. She leaned over, did something to her sandal. “Anyway,” she said. “That’s your dog’s name? Yul Brynner?”
“He’s got a big scar on his forehead,” Jack said.
“That,” she said, “is excellent.”
Deep into the party somebody produced a wooden baseball bat, and they drew bases in the street with chalk, played baseball with the leftover ears of corn. If somebody hit it just right, the thing would disintegrate in a spray of kernels and husk. When the police drove by they’d apologize, get out of the street, wait a few minutes, start over.
He meets her again at the yearly Halloween party the art department throws. It’s famous. There’s plastic taped to the floor, wall to wall. People come dressed as historical figures, as time periods, as abstract ideas. Beth comes as someone’s inner child. Little red polka-dot dress, braids, roller skates. She skates through the door, hits a threshold between the kitchen and the living room, falls, hits her head on the floor and knocks herself out. Jack’s one of the ones who picks her up, puts her in a bedroom, unlaces her skates. He goes for ice, and by the time he gets back she’s awake, holding her head, crying a little, laughing. “Thank you,” she says.
“You’re welcome.”
“What are you dressed as?” she asks him, taking the ice.
